Everyone Breaks
by seriousish
Summary: “Wanna know how I got these scars?”


Hey! Psst! You! Yeah, you! C'mere. It's okay, I won't bite. You probably don't recognize me without the warpaint. Here, let me smile.

Ah! There we go! You seem nervous, though. First time meeting a celebrity? Maybe you're just feeling a little… overwhelmed by Arkham? How 'bout a bedtime story to put your mind at ease? You wanna know how I got these scars?

Mm-hm, I seem to have piqued your interest. Y'see, I wasn't always the handsome devil you see before you. And I wasn't always a lone wolf either. Long before me and the Bat became a dynamic duo, I was part of a double-act. Names changed to protect the guilty, but Jack and Harley were quite the team. We were like Bonnie and Clyde, Laurel and Hardy, sickle cell and anemia. We grew up together, lighting cats on fire, throwing rocks at drunks. Aww, young love. And once the Hair-In-Strange-Places Fairy knocked at our door, we took our show on the road. Kid stuff, probably bore you to tears – ski masks, semi-automatics, getaway sex… have you ever had getaway sex? After the thrill of the escape, it's almost anticlimactic.

Heh.

Now Harley, she loves Westerns. She has this dream of having our own gang. So it's not white picket fences and snot-nosed brats. It was good enough for us. She even came up with a motif. We'd leave calling cards at our crime scenes. Literally! Two of hearts, six of clubs, whatever struck our fancy. And when we ran out of playing cards we would lie low, you know, wait until the heat was off, and then we'd start in with a Tarot deck or Uno cards; ain't that just _darling_?

We went from coast to coast like a syndicated talk show, seeing America and robbing it blind. We go through the hearts and the diamonds and the clubs and we're on the spade face cards when guess what road sign its out headlights?

"Gotham City – Abandon All Hope, You Coming In."

Not very well-read, those graffiti artists.

Now, we haven't heard of the Batman. What can I say, the guy wasn't exactly a people person. But me and Harley… hee hee… we have a grand old time. I swear, your mob was so… geriatric that it was like taking candy from a baby. Not even a really on-the-ball baby. One of those premature ones that you could fit in a jar of mayonnaise.

Oh, but this Batman fella… he's something else! I leave a Joker card at my last bank and he uses it to track me down! Still don't know how he pulled _that_ one off. Maybe it was maaaagic…

Me and Harley, though, you see, we're not exactly what you'd call prudent spenders. We just need a little chump change to afford a new TV. Like one of those--Star Trek numbers that gets a thousand and five channels. We're doing some old-fashioned mugging when we hear that Bat-train coming down the tracks. I panic. Bam! Bam! Bam! Mom, gone. Dad, gone! Junior…

Even I wouldn't want to meet the guy who wouldn't be messed up by doing a kid. It's one of those go-directly-to-hell, do-not-pass-go, do-not-collect-two-hundred-dollars kinda deals. But if you can get away with that, you can get away with anything.

Batman arrives right in the nick of too late. He takes it a wee bit personal. Beats me to a pulp of a pulp. I wake up in a room with one-way mirrors. Just me, the Bat, and however many voyeuristic cops are behind the glass. He wants to know who 86ed the kid and he's not afraid to make me a pulp of a pulp of a pulp to find out. And all those cops and attorneys with all their oaths and ideals, don't mind bending the rules so I can get my unjust desserts.

It was her or me, you understand. One of us was going to break. Everybody breaks. So I told them that Harley did it. Anyone would've done the same. Anyone.

I got a glimpse of Harley as they dragged her off. She was still calling out for me. "Puddin! Puddin!" But I knew that bitch would've cracked eventually. I was just doing the smart thing.

Never saw her again. Even the funeral was closed casket. Electric chairs don't make for very pretty corpses.

Now, at this point you may think I've been through enough, right!? But the penal system wouldn't agree with you. I get sent to Blackgate, where the inmates don't care that I was only an accessory to sending little Jimmy to the big playground in the sky. They round up a posse and pay me a visit.

After some fun and games with a toilet bowl and a bottle of bleach, they take a shiv and play dentist. But by then Mr. Pain is out to lunch, along with a few other critical faculties. I hold my breath when the nurses give me anesthesia, lie there on the operating table until the saw-bones sew up my face, then I grab a scalpel and return the favor.

The whole ordeal has left me with both a snazzy new look and an epiphany of sorts. One, green hair and deathly pale skin look good on me. Two, chaos is the natural order of things. No matter what you do, no matter how strong you feel, everything either falls apart, burns, or my personal favorite, **explodes**.

I think you know the rest, if they allow newspapers in here. I started knocking over Mob banks, which was… okay, I suppose. Then I met Batman. He gave me a purpose. He's an agent of order, you know. I don't like that about him. Well, I suppose he wouldn't be the perfect man if there wasn't one thing I needed to fix…

And now I'm in here. With you.

For the love of--**settle down, Dr. Crane!** If I was going to kill you, don't you think I'd've told a scarier story? No, see, I've been thinking of going on a little _comeback tour_ and I want you to open for me. Just picture it. We'll make 'em laugh, we'll make 'em fear, and then we'll make 'em die. All you have is pass your audition. See that guard over there? Kill him.

I thought you'd say that. Here's a pencil, freshly sharpened. Go and be scary.

Oh, this is going to be so much fun!!


End file.
